Bloomberg Swim or sink: That’s the message shipping executives in Asia are taking into the new year. Faced with a prolonged trade slowdown and depressed freight rates, the region’s container lines are set for further consolidation after a year that’s seen the collapse of South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping Co., a mega merger among Japanese rivals and the sale of …

  Bloomberg Shares of Toshiba Corp. recovered from an early dive after the Asahi newspaper reported regulatory concerns about the company’s earnings. Toshiba rose 2.3 percent to 289.6 yen as of 11:13 a.m. in Tokyo after slumping as much as 6.9 percent in early trade. Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission suspects the company padded earnings by about 40 billion …

  Bloomberg Euro-area inflation accelerated in December at the fastest pace since 2013, suggesting that a debate about the appropriate degree of European Central Bank stimulus is about to gather momentum. Consumer prices rose 1.1 percent from a year earlier, following a 0.6 percent gain in November, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said on Wednesday. That’s above a …